War, Thoughts about War, Books about War

First off, the CIA has posted the unclassified items from the latest issue of its Studies in Intelligence. As usual, it all looks very interesting. However, three pieces struck as particularly noteworthy:

Finally, David Robarge, the Chief of the CIA’s History Staff, has a fine review article carefully weighing the various books, films, etc. that have grappled with the enigma/hero/walking disaster that was James Angleton.

And yesterday I picked up a copy of Professor Alfred W. McCoy’s 2009 book, Policy America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. McCoy seems to have an extensive discussion of American intelligence operations in the context of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War. Based purely on a quick read of the introduction, McCoy seems to argue, like Joan Jensen, that what the United States learned in these conflicts about conducting surveillance and intelligence operations it took home and also applied elsewhere. As I say, I haven’t read the book yet, but the History News Network had a positive review of it last fall. Mind you, McCoy has done extensive work on the role of the CIA in the international narcotics trade, so I’m going to approach this work with caution. We shall see.

The Library of Congress has online a collection of motion pictures documenting the Spanish-American War, a part of its “digital collections” section. These brief movies are all from the period. Three or four are re-enactments (and the LOC carefully labels them as such) the rest are the real thing. That said, cameras were clumsy then and cameramen disinclined to expose themselves to gunfire, so don’t expect combat footage.

Until I stumbled across this, I was not aware that there were any motion pictures of that war. I think you’ll find them interesting.